October 2009/Cheshvan 5770
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NORTH READING, MA
PERMIT #168
This year our Sigi Ziering
column focuses on the
ethics of kashrut. Each
month an esteemed guest
columnist will wrestle with
what Jewish texts and our
tradition teach us about
the food we eat; the
preparation of food; the
people who prepare our
food; the food and
restaurants that are
deemed kosher. This
column is sponsored by
Bruce Whizin and Marilyn
Ziering in honor of Marilyn’s
husband, Sigi Ziering, of
blessed memory. Visit
shma.com to view the
series and responses.
Ethics Sigi Ziering
A Prescription for an
Ethical Religious Practice
IRENE LEHRER SANDALOW
Irene Lehrer Sandalow, director
of outreach and education at
the Jewish Council on Urban
Affairs, jcua.org, works to
educate, engage, and mobilize
the Jewish community in the
social justice work of JCUA.
Standing in Postville, Iowa, I was faced with a fiercely rumbling stomach and a personal decision: ethics vs. halakhah.
It was June 2008, and I had traveled to
Postville with some of the staff and leaders of
the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, a social
justice organization that has advocated on behalf of immigration reform. We were planning
a march and rally in solidarity with the families and workers who were victims of both the
largest immigration raid in U.S. history (at that
time) and of serious labor abuses by the
Agriprocessors, Inc. kosher meat-packing plant.
As a Jew who observes kashrut, I was unable to join my colleagues eating at a nonkosher restaurant. Even in this small Iowa town,
a number of kosher restaurants were located
nearby. But they were owned by the Rubashkin
family, the owners of Agriprocessors. Wouldn’t
it be unethical to patronize a restaurant owned
by the owners of Agriprocessors? For the first
time in my life, I was forced to choose between
observing kashrut and following my ethical convictions. The nation’s observant Jews were
being forced to make that same decision.
The reading of Isaiah on Yom Kippur is a
yearly reminder of how ritual law and ethical
practices need to complement one another.
Isaiah admonishes the Jewish people for abiding by the laws between God and mankind while
being indifferent to the suffering surrounding
them. As it is written: “Will you call this a fast,
and a day acceptable to the Lord? […] Is it not to
share your bread with the hungry and bring the
homeless poor into your house?” (Isaiah 58: 4-7)
Isaiah’s words send a strong message.
Practicing Jewish laws and rituals, without being
guided by ethical principles, is akin to wearing
glasses without the prescription lenses. While
frames are essential to hold the lenses, we should
not focus excessively, or vainly, on the frames.
Keeping kosher is essential to my Jewish practice,
as frames are to my glasses, but rigorously following the laws of kashrut should not outweigh
our efforts toward creating a more ethical society.
The Jewish response to the crisis in
Postville has been encouraging. It demonstrates
the rising consciousness among American Jews
that our ethics and values need to be vigorously
upheld. The Orthodox Union devotes vast resources to safeguard the technical aspects of
kashrut; should we not safeguard the ethical vision of our forbears? Our institutions — even
the kashrut industry, which includes meat processing and packaging plants, shops, restaurants, etc. — must protect workers and defend
human rights. If Jewish ethics and social justice are central to our identities, we must make
them central to our schools, synagogues, federations, shops, factories, and foundations.
Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai tells a parable of a
man in a boat who drills a hole under his seat.
Ignoring the protest of the other passengers, he
claims that the hole is not their concern because it is under his seat. That limited vision of
Agriprocessors’ role in the larger community is
the essence of its corruption and is what led the
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